SlashChick, just wanted to say that we appreciate your offer and wouldn't mind discussing some kind of backup mirroring situation with you.
The reason why your offer was treated as such was not because we don't appreciate it -- indeed we've had a few offers and we're fortunate to receive them!
As one of the proponents of this project (which I suggested more than a month ago but only became serious about around the middle of June) I know that there were a number of possibilities that we considered before deciding to go with OSL.
In particular, I've maintained an excellent relationship with Scott Kveton over there during my time at Spread Firefox. He was an excellent resource and advocate during that time and in fact offered to host Drupal.org sometime back in February when I mentioned the idea to him.
As part of the arrangement, we needed to purchase the hardware on which drupal.org would live. The $3000 target was set by the following recommended specs, supplied by Scott:
Dell PowerEdge 1850 1U 2 x 2.8Ghz Xeon w/ 1Mb cache 800Mhz FSB 2GB RAM 2 x 73 GB SCSI disks RAID controller for RAID1 (mirror) Redundant Power Supply
From there, Dries (Drupal's founder), Steven Peck, Kieran Lal (of CivicSpace) and myself collaborated on a fundraising strategy, with Dries and Steven writing up the description that ended up on Drupal.org.
Ironically, or perhaps just as one could have predicted, drupal.org went black for two days just as we were finalizing the copy. With drupal.org down, I presume Dries moved the DNS to another host and posted the text we had.
13 hours later we more than doubled our goal thanks to the collective economic power of the open source community!
So in sum, SlashChick, we do really appreciate your offer, but we had already staked out a plan a month ago and drupal.org's going black was simply an oddly timed incident that spurred the community to action! Feel free to get in touch with me to discuss your offer further if you'd like.
I worked with Dan early on in the design process for this project. At the time, I pushed Drupal (and CivicSpace -- since I work for them) for its modularity, ease of hacking, community-centered design and superior architecture (taxonomy, etc) and for the experience I had using it on Spread Firefox, but I can't take credit for "convincing him". In fact, I didn't realize that the project had moved forward so much until it came up on the Drupal-dev list. But now the site has launched and I've talked with Dan, it looks like I'll yet again have the chance to contribute to this project!
Well, this happened very early on when I was still actively working on the theme. I had Josh Jarmin step up and do a great job on the CSS but then I couldn't find anyone to work on the Drupal Image Gallery module.
I am working on rewriting the Spread Firefox theme for CivicSpace 0.8.1, so that will hopefully address some of the problems that folks have reported about the theme.
Well, blame sloppy code from Drupal that made it extremely hard for me to theme. There was an attempt made at improving the galleries but I couldn't find coders to help me implement the solution.
Yay open source!
In the FAQ, we said that we wouldn't list names alphabetically so that we wouldn't get 900 Aarons. We never said that we wouldn't sort on last name!
As far as the Community Champions in their own area, I decided that they were integral to the community and shouldn't be "pulled" out in their own area. Therefore I underlined their names to bring them the recognition of being CCs.
Well, that problem is actually caused by a newly confirmed bug in Illustrator that was discovered during the production of this ad!
Apparently Illustrator treats "half-spaces" (which I used on either side of the bullet characters) differently than InDesign and not the same as it does "spacebar spaces". I struggled to find a solution to this in conjunction with an Adobe engineer (who supports Firefox enthusiastically, mind you!) but we didn't figure out the solution until it was too late.
However, the names in the poster will be justified correctly.
This is slightly bigger than when the c|net article came out and MUCH bigger than when it was only one page!!
In all my test prints, the names were fairly legible, and from what I hear, they look pretty good in the paper.
Honestly, I have no idea why the text isn't searchable, because I didn't convert it to outlines... However, what is probably happening is that when I placed the original Illustrator file into Indesign, it encapsulated it. When I created the actual PDF, it was like encapsulating an encapsulation! Technically, I don't know what this means, but in theory, it makes some sense as to why the text isn't searchable.
Really, if I had known that searching the text would be everyone's favorite hobby, I would have made sure to figure out some way to make the text searchable! I may yet just provide a standalone PDF of the page to allow for searching.
Well, the problem was that I wasn't aware of a hidden feature in Illustrator CS called "Make Opacity Mask". Now that I found that, I'm humming right along. We're nearly go--just waiting on legal and NYT review.
What are you talking about? The problem was creating the proof-of-concept technique. The final ad would then be created once that it was established and the final, cleaned list of names was ready.
Besides, when was the last time you rasterized a type layer with more than 120,000 characters at 600dpi in grayscale? Try it sometime; seriously, it's a blast.
Well, I was able to get an Adobe Engineer (thanks Dave!) on IM today and he showed me the error of my ways... Apparently Illustrator CS introduced a hidden feature known as the "Opacity Mask" which solved add my problems... Rendering time is now neglible... NYTimes here we come!
I originally wanted to get the ad out to the community for review, but there were a number of complicating factors... and now that we're almost ready, I think that it actually works to our advantage to make it a surprise. I've had a lot of eyes from the immediate Mozilla family look it over (mostly the core developers and the good folks at SilverOrange) and we think that the ad stands up well and will be well-received by the community.
In the interest of process and history, I'd love to post all the revisions that the ad has gone through so far once it runs, starting with my initial sketches to the final piece... Excellent idea! Thanks!
The ad is 13" x 21". The font I'm using is Univers 67 Bold Condensed for the names. They're set at 4.5pt/4.6pt, tracking set to -25. I have enough room for 1.75" of white space on the page.
Since I'm designing it, I didn't do exactly what you would do, but you've got the right idea.
Actually, I'm working at Mozilla on their shiny new Dual 1.8GHz G5 PowerMac with 1.25GB RAM.
The problem is that 10,000 names converted to outlines and intersected with a complex, gradiated shape isn't a task for mere mortals. But at the rate this thing is happening... Geez, Firefox 2.0 might be out! (j/k -- I'm almost done.)
Slashdot Mirror
This has been fixed. Thanks for the pointer... blasted AJAX form thinger!
SlashChick, just wanted to say that we appreciate your offer and wouldn't mind discussing some kind of backup mirroring situation with you.
The reason why your offer was treated as such was not because we don't appreciate it -- indeed we've had a few offers and we're fortunate to receive them!
As one of the proponents of this project (which I suggested more than a month ago but only became serious about around the middle of June) I know that there were a number of possibilities that we considered before deciding to go with OSL.
In particular, I've maintained an excellent relationship with Scott Kveton over there during my time at Spread Firefox. He was an excellent resource and advocate during that time and in fact offered to host Drupal.org sometime back in February when I mentioned the idea to him.
As part of the arrangement, we needed to purchase the hardware on which drupal.org would live. The $3000 target was set by the following recommended specs, supplied by Scott:
Dell PowerEdge 1850 1U
2 x 2.8Ghz Xeon w/ 1Mb cache 800Mhz FSB
2GB RAM
2 x 73 GB SCSI disks
RAID controller for RAID1 (mirror)
Redundant Power Supply
From there, Dries (Drupal's founder), Steven Peck, Kieran Lal (of CivicSpace) and myself collaborated on a fundraising strategy, with Dries and Steven writing up the description that ended up on Drupal.org.
Ironically, or perhaps just as one could have predicted, drupal.org went black for two days just as we were finalizing the copy. With drupal.org down, I presume Dries moved the DNS to another host and posted the text we had.
13 hours later we more than doubled our goal thanks to the collective economic power of the open source community!
So in sum, SlashChick, we do really appreciate your offer, but we had already staked out a plan a month ago and drupal.org's going black was simply an oddly timed incident that spurred the community to action! Feel free to get in touch with me to discuss your offer further if you'd like.
I worked with Dan early on in the design process for this project. At the time, I pushed Drupal (and CivicSpace -- since I work for them) for its modularity, ease of hacking, community-centered design and superior architecture (taxonomy, etc) and for the experience I had using it on Spread Firefox, but I can't take credit for "convincing him". In fact, I didn't realize that the project had moved forward so much until it came up on the Drupal-dev list. But now the site has launched and I've talked with Dan, it looks like I'll yet again have the chance to contribute to this project!
Funny how disinformation flows though...!
Well, this happened very early on when I was still actively working on the theme. I had Josh Jarmin step up and do a great job on the CSS but then I couldn't find anyone to work on the Drupal Image Gallery module.
I am working on rewriting the Spread Firefox theme for CivicSpace 0.8.1, so that will hopefully address some of the problems that folks have reported about the theme.
Sounds like a decent spec. When will Mozilla be building this?
At least you can wear protection to make sure you're safe.
Well, blame sloppy code from Drupal that made it extremely hard for me to theme. There was an attempt made at improving the galleries but I couldn't find coders to help me implement the solution. Yay open source!
In the FAQ, we said that we wouldn't list names alphabetically so that we wouldn't get 900 Aarons. We never said that we wouldn't sort on last name!
As far as the Community Champions in their own area, I decided that they were integral to the community and shouldn't be "pulled" out in their own area. Therefore I underlined their names to bring them the recognition of being CCs.
Well, that problem is actually caused by a newly confirmed bug in Illustrator that was discovered during the production of this ad!
Apparently Illustrator treats "half-spaces" (which I used on either side of the bullet characters) differently than InDesign and not the same as it does "spacebar spaces". I struggled to find a solution to this in conjunction with an Adobe engineer (who supports Firefox enthusiastically, mind you!) but we didn't figure out the solution until it was too late.
However, the names in the poster will be justified correctly.
Yeah, in my test prints the white areas obscured the names so I textwrapped the names around the two lightest areas.
Though we haven't publicized it yet, you've got the idea! :)
Got any friends who like to translate?
You could of course grab the Firefox BugMeNot extension and skip the registration. :)
- Font: Univers Bold Condensed
- Size/Line-height: 4.5pt/4.6
- Tracking: -23
This is slightly bigger than when the c|net article came out and MUCH bigger than when it was only one page!! In all my test prints, the names were fairly legible, and from what I hear, they look pretty good in the paper.Honestly, I have no idea why the text isn't searchable, because I didn't convert it to outlines... However, what is probably happening is that when I placed the original Illustrator file into Indesign, it encapsulated it. When I created the actual PDF, it was like encapsulating an encapsulation! Technically, I don't know what this means, but in theory, it makes some sense as to why the text isn't searchable.
Really, if I had known that searching the text would be everyone's favorite hobby, I would have made sure to figure out some way to make the text searchable! I may yet just provide a standalone PDF of the page to allow for searching.
Well, the problem was that I wasn't aware of a hidden feature in Illustrator CS called "Make Opacity Mask". Now that I found that, I'm humming right along. We're nearly go--just waiting on legal and NYT review.
What are you talking about? The problem was creating the proof-of-concept technique. The final ad would then be created once that it was established and the final, cleaned list of names was ready.
Besides, when was the last time you rasterized a type layer with more than 120,000 characters at 600dpi in grayscale? Try it sometime; seriously, it's a blast.
Well, I was able to get an Adobe Engineer (thanks Dave!) on IM today and he showed me the error of my ways... Apparently Illustrator CS introduced a hidden feature known as the "Opacity Mask" which solved add my problems... Rendering time is now neglible... NYTimes here we come!
I originally wanted to get the ad out to the community for review, but there were a number of complicating factors... and now that we're almost ready, I think that it actually works to our advantage to make it a surprise. I've had a lot of eyes from the immediate Mozilla family look it over (mostly the core developers and the good folks at SilverOrange) and we think that the ad stands up well and will be well-received by the community.
In the interest of process and history, I'd love to post all the revisions that the ad has gone through so far once it runs, starting with my initial sketches to the final piece... Excellent idea! Thanks!
The ad is 13" x 21". The font I'm using is Univers 67 Bold Condensed for the names. They're set at 4.5pt/4.6pt, tracking set to -25. I have enough room for 1.75" of white space on the page.
Since I'm designing it, I didn't do exactly what you would do, but you've got the right idea.
Chris
Huh. Where'd you hear that? That's a pretty good idea, but not one that I considered while designing the ad. :)
Chris
Actually, I'm working at Mozilla on their shiny new Dual 1.8GHz G5 PowerMac with 1.25GB RAM.
The problem is that 10,000 names converted to outlines and intersected with a complex, gradiated shape isn't a task for mere mortals. But at the rate this thing is happening... Geez, Firefox 2.0 might be out! (j/k -- I'm almost done.)